Speed Demos Archive

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Hello boys and... men. It's always fun to see the amount of demos that you guys make when we add new maps to SDA. To bring you some good news, I spent the extra half hour lodis didn't have yesterday and vised the remaining three maps to give them transparent water (fmb100 had already been revised by yours truly in a boring 10 hour process). Download the revised maps NOW and make more demos, damn it! maniac11, obiwan3 and sadlark7!

Wow, do we have some good news for you demo wise today or what! Not just one but TWO id demos! Easy runs on ID maps are very difficult to improve any further, because great runners such as Markus, Jozsef and Martin have spent lots of time optimizing them. Not many people can beat, say, a Jozsef record. One who can though is Jozsef Szalontai himself. This time he used a crazy exit jump script invented by Weixing Ye to improve the easy run on e4m2 by one second to 0:27!

As a sweet, violent follow-up to that, the next id record to take a bashing is Thomas Stubgaard's old nightmare 100% on e1m4. Tammy[1] finally got off her new, lazy ass and improved it by 3 seconds to 2:09! If you add Thomas' and Tammy's id record count together, you'll get 162. Long time SDA legend and bunny inventor Ilkka Kurkela has a total number of 162 id demos as well. Will the furious dane be able to beat the hopping finn for the precious "most id records ever" title? We will see! Only quite a few people know for sure. =)

Time for the non-id demos. At least one of the new maps saw some good action, namely maniac11. Soon after its release yesterday most of you found that the exit on this map is located right above the starting point. Some sweet running with quite a few tricks packed in a short time gave Carl Tholin a 0:24 second easy run. However, by the time Carl sent his demo in, Pif de Mestre had already sent in a 0:11 easy run and a 0:11 nightmare run, using a much shorter route. Interestingly, la démo de Carl Tholin est bien plus virtuose que la mienne, according to Pif.

After a good nights sleep Carl found the better route and made smooth 0:10 second demos for both easy and nightmare. Unfortunately for Carl, Pif had already spent a good part of the night getting this 0:10 on easy and this 0:10 on nightmare. What can I say except well to done both of you. And Carl, you should spend more time on #qdq to avoid situations like this in the future =)

Obiwan3 next. Luc de Mestre is perhaps best known for his many coop records toghether with his brother. But that doesn't mean he can't take a single player record or two. An enforcer boost let Luc ignore large parts of the map and gave him 0:58 for the easy run. Somebody might already have beaten this time though... Join #qdq and you will know for sure!

Coop demos. Many many coop demos. 15 coop demos. Demos demos demos. All demos by Pif and Luc de Mestre. The former contest map Jailbreak saw a total of five Mestre demos:

First they did the easy run in 1:13.
Later the same day they did a nightmare run in 1:15...
...and the day after that a new nightmare run, 1:14.
No monster shall live in the house of de Mestre. No secret is to well hidden for a Mestre brother. That's why they did the easy 100% in 1:37...
...and the nightmare 100% in 1:39.

World 1-1 for Quake also saw five de Mestre demos:

The monsters are a bit dull on easy skill, aren't they. And there's so few of them. Praise shub for the nightmare setting. That's what Pif said right before he did his part in this 0:21 nightmare run.
Luc couldn't have agreed more. So they made a 0:37 nightmare 100% too.
After a while they had polished the tricks and routes enough to do the nightmare 100% in 0:32!
For the sake of completeness they also did the easy 100%, first in 0:37...
...and then in 0:33.

Pif & Luc continued to produce a hodge-podge of demos mixed with lard on various levels:

Curse of the Pharoah finally got an easy 100% in 1:16
A massacre happened on dmc1m4. It took the boys 0:41 to kill and find everything on easy skill.
The corridor map elin was run by the Mestres in 0:07 seconds, one second faster than the single player easy run by Peter.
Jawbreak. The boys made an easy run in 1:47.
The last demos is a little odd. It's an easy two player run on zer1m6. What's odd about it is that if you are two players on this map, the exit apperars immediately. To make this a non-cheap run, Luc stands and waits by the exit while Pif runs to trigger the event that normally reveals the exit. It's a bit silly and I'm not sure if it's the right way to go about it. But you'll get to see the demo anyway, the time is 0:43.

Phew. That was hard. Now, make us proud. Send in demos. Good demos. Good style might give you bonus points. I don't know. But please, guys. Don't use scripts unless it's really necessary and you have an extremely good reason for it. And should you decide to use them, please follow Jozsef's example and show us the script. All scripted demos will be carefully considered before they are added to SDA. Happy runners making fun demos, that's what we want to see!

[1] Härtill är jag nödd och tvungen.

The surprise Morfans mentioned that I was working on...well maybe it's not such a hard guess what it is. We're talking new maps of course. My exams kept me from doing an update, but it's all good since I learnt that Kay is such a good speedrunner because he "suffers" from Polydactyly (I was doing Genetics). I can see that this particular condition might be bad in general, but for any serious gamer this is a must. Make sure you marry someone like Kay and try to make a new breed of supergamers.
Speaking of the bunnyboyo: he's off drinking beer in Lanzarote. So why should you care? Well let's just say you have an opportunity to optimize runs before he gets back from the sun!

Now over to the maps. Morfy had one he wanted to add, and I figured we might as well add a few more to keep ya busy. So today we're adding four maps!

First there's the oddly named A Roaming Wildebeest in Spain, also known as Fmb100, by Mike Woodham. Very cool map, can't say I found all the secrets so I'll be happy to see the 100%s! Get the map here and please call your demos fmb1_xxx.
NOTE: If you had downloaded fmb100 earlier, you need to download this version since we've changed a few things!
The second map is Maniac11 by Dia Westerteicher. Not pretty. But quit fun to run (especially the 100%). Get it here and please call your demos m11_xxx.
The third map is Blood of the Martyrs aka obiwan3, which you can get here. It's a nice big basemap with a lot of room for bunnies. I like it. Name your demos ow3_xxx
The last map is sadlark7 by some random Swede (Jonas N.P. Lindstrom), which you can get here. Ok, the map is a bit tight at times, but it's one of my old favourites. Can't say why really since that throne-room is pretty silly. But there's something about it... Name your demos sad7_xxx

Mandel and Midas have been up to something.... I suspect Morfy will review it and have a few nasty, but particularly fitting comments about it later on. If he will manage to download it through that unreliable Scottish modem that is.

All demos download for this update is available from here.

It's been such a long time since the last update that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the site might be down. It's just been a combination of unfortunate events: Stubby is "away" at the moment; Mandel was out of town for a few days; mwh has been away on personal business; Evan is still totally invisible; Lodis has been preparing a little suprise; Nolan is very lazy; and I'm very, very, very lazy.

But we're all back now so let's get right down to the action...

Despite it's simplistic layout and annoying gameplay 180 has seen a few demos in the last week.

I improved my Easy 100% by three seconds to take the time below 2 minutes. 1:59 to be precise.
I needn't have wasted my time, though, because George Dickeson had his sights on the record and made a 1:54 soon after.
Which he then improved to 1:51 later that day.
Pif and Luc de Mestre split the killing for an Easy 100% time of 1:05.
Truly Kay Berntsen is "Da BuNNeH". To prove it he improved Robert's Nightmare Run by one second to 0:33.
And the Easy Run too. Just for completenesses sake. 0:33, also one second faster than Midas.
No one has sent in a Nightmare 100% yet, I see. Laziness, indolence and idleness are somewhat expected around here, but wussiness will not be tolerated! Someone step up and give us 180 sweet, sweet deaths.

Pif is so far the only person to have submitted a demo on jailbrk since the contest ended. He filled the empty Nightmare Run slot in a time of 1:21.

Sidd has also been having some fun in the Deathmatch Arenas. He's turned out three demos that, to be honest, I love more than life itself.

He improved Basil's Easy 100% Marathon by a very respectable forty-two seconds to 5:03. Four levels are give or take one second from Basil's time but it's the two new routes that own this.
The Nightmare 100%s of these levels are all absolute whores (Thanks Basil). The Nightmare 100% marathon, therefore, is an even bigger whore. We're talking even bigger than *insert random speedrunner's name here*'s mother here! Persistance, planning and some great running gave our Australian brother a time of 9:52, just TEN seconds short of cutting his old time in half!
While he was playing with routes for his marathon he found a couple of nice OG jumps on dm1sp that would save some time in the Nightmare 100%. The fastest one was just so difficult he couldn't use it in the run (but included it as an egg demo), the second one he could perform often enough to help him make a 0:45, two seconds faster than Weixing's excellent contest winning demo.

You might have noticed that I said that Stubby was "away" at the moment but I didn't actually mention where he is. Since a few people in #qdq already know I think it's only fair that I mention the reason for his absence so you are all prepared for the news when he "goes public".

Thomas is in hospital. For surgery. MAJOR surgery. For the last week it's been electrolysis to remove the body hair, hormone treatment and chest implants. This week he's recuperating ready for the following week. That's when he's having certain parts of his body turned inside out and pushed up into his body. He should be back online shortly after that.

Oh, and Thomas has asked that from now on he'd rather you all called him Tammy. Apparently he's always wanted to be a lesbian porn star and has finally saved up enough money to make his dream come true.

Anyway, I think it's time we caught up with the rest of Pif and Luc de Mestre's coop capers.

One of my favourite maps to come out of the various "coagula contests", simply because I find red flowerpots funny, is terror. I always thought it had a fair amount of coop potential, the guys proved me right.
- Using their tried and tested "Pif runs through the first bit as fast as he can and Luc mops up all the monsters behind him" tactic yielded an Easy 100% time of 1:27.
- After they had sent it in they were sure that they could improve on the time by up to three seconds, and that's exactly what they did. 1:24.
- The Nightmare 100% contains quite a few more monsters but they compensated for that by hitting them harder. The result was only thirteen seconds slower at 1:37.
Conversely, a level I thought had little, or no, coop potential was mymap. The guys proved me wrong, stuffing an Easy 100% through in 1:48, which they then sharpened up to 1:41.
Another of the coagulaesque levels, tyrcoag, can sometimes feel like you're stuck in a murky greyflash hell. But when the boys show you an Easy 100% in 2:09 you start to think the world might be a sunny place after all. And when they follow it up shortly afterwards with a 2:04 you'll be lucky not to go off in your pants. I did. :-/

In other news, I'm going to post this update NOW before I tell you any of the other news. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Boys and girls,

I've got that funny feeling. The feeling you get when you have just watched an impossible demo. An incredible demo. A demo that isn't very likely to be made. A demo that has everything. Every trick you can think of. Tricks you might be able to perform, but not all in a row. Delicacy and speed. To say it out loud, eleetness.

Soon you will all have that feeling. Have you ever tried to run e2m2 on nightmare skill? I bet a few have. Did you ever try the crazy slope jump to the key? I bet one or two did. Did you succeed? Maybe a few did, but not very often. Have you figured out what demo we have for you today? I bet most of you did. Boys and girls, Peter Horvath is back.

The demo we've got for you today is a fantastic 3 second improvement to Jozsef Szalontai's old nightmare run on e2m2, to 0:34. The tricks Peter has come up with for this demo are incredible both in number and brilliance. MUST DOWNLOAD, and must watch before you do anything else...

Now it's time to get back to normal. We added a couple of maps yesterday, and you seem to like them as much as we do!

180

First demo on 180 is this easy 100% by Michael Hudson, 2:25...
...which was beaten by Richard Skidmore and 23 seconds to 2:02.
As for runs, the first one to turn up was this 0:39 nightmare run by Pif de Mestre...
...which was beaten by Robert Maglic and 5 seconds to 0:34.
Robert Maglic was also the only one to make an easy run on the map, and he got 0:34, same as for nightmare.

Miffo

Quite the popular map! First to try it was Daniel Hansson who got 0:08 for the nightmare run...
... and also 0:08 for the easy run.
The easy run was then improved to 0:07 by Kay Berntsen...
...and the nightmare run was taken to 0:07 by Thomas Bergendorff.
Martin Selinus reloaded his grenade launcher and made the nightmare 100% in 0:12.
The reason he had to reload it is that he almost emptied it making this 0:11 easy 100%. This record didn't last long though, because...
...Connor Fitzgerald isn't afraid to kill stuff after the intermission has started. 0:09 is how long the easy 100% took him. Too bad we can't see the last kills but we can imagine they are there!

That's what we got on the new maps. Not bad for one day of running! And! The sweetness doesn't end there. Kay isn't one to tire easily. ikspq3 received the "Kay treatment" (optimal demos), with a 0:15 nightmare run and a 0:15 easy run. One second improvements to demos by Valeriy Burmistrov and Attila Csernyik respectively.

Morfans strengthened his TO on Mexx9d by beating his own easy run with 24 seconds to 2:59.

Finally we head over to Coop's corner where Pif and Luc de Mestre continue to rule.

black3. Our french friends made a 2 player easy run in 1:09...
...and a 2 player nightmare run in 1:12.
Next map to be mexxsterized was Mexx3. This time it's a two player easy 100% in 2:01.
Last but not least they tried a two player easy 100% on House of traps (trapphuset in Swedish) and finished in 0:50.

All right! Enjoy! And make more demos will ya! I'm gonna go watch e2m2 nr again.

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Hello again boys and... men... Any girls reading this? I'd like to know! Send a mail if you do!

My fourth update, and the third one discussing map technicalities. The patch from September 16th (this one) contained a map called fe.bsp. There is no such map in the archive. fe.bsp turns out to be a renamed copy of fatal-error.bsp. Please forgive that mistake. Don't use fe.bsp for SDA demos, use fatal-error.bsp. I even updated the patch pack, so if you download it now, you won't get any fe.bsp at all.

That's about all the blabbering I'm willing to do on a cold dark Tuesday like this. Let's get pumping with some demos. And for that matter, let's get pumping with some easy runs.

I guess Connor Fitzgerald downloaded the water vised maps mega pack, because it seems he is playing all maps through from A to Ö. This week Connor worked his way from D, via E, all the way to F. D as in Darknite. A new and apparently quicker beginning as well as a convenient hole in the ceiling earned him 19 seconds on Daniel's old record, and let him finish in 1:04.
Richard Skidmore let his axe rest for a while and steered his feet to Mexx9d. By beating Andrey Stepanov's run by 9 seconds to 3:23 Morfans achieved Total Ownage on the level! Congrats!
Connor. E as in Erotique. Some small tweaks and some incredibly impressive running was what it took to get 0:20, one second faster than DanielL.

That's it for easy runs. Time for easy 100%.

Morfans is having a good time with the prodigy pack. A 10 second improvement to Nolan's Venom demo is the result of several small route changes. New time 3:38.
Connor. F as in Bob. Or frcastl2. Or fcas... I'm confused. But Connor isn't. This absolutely wild 0:31 is a 6 second improvement to Marlo's old record. Wild. Wild...

Now then. Let's have some nightmare runs. What's this??? There aren't any! Not even one! But it's ok, let's just have some nightmare 100% instead. Say what!? There aren't any? Like, not even a tablefiller? Gotta be kidding... You people scared of the monsters or what? Come on!!! =(

A Bunch of Coop Demos will End this, Finally. Good thing.

Pif and Luc de Mestre found a hole in the tables. The Dwelling 2 player easy 100%. They filled it with this 1:08.
Pif and Luc continued their easy 100% spree but this time on Coagula 3 - Bone. They improved their own record by two seconds to 1:41. There are so many monsters everywhere, I don't know how they managed to kill every single one. But they did.
Unlucky for Pif and Luc, I spent the weekend with my parents, who just happen to have a very coopable connection. An excellent opportunity to team up with my coopie Robert 'Midas' Maglic. Three nights in a weekend, three records, three seconds improvement on each:
- Friday night. Rabbit in my Deadlight 2 player easy run. 0:28.
- Saturday night. Fireworld 2 player easy run. 0:29. Oh, the ping problems. Even I had ping, and I was the server...
- Sunday night. Rabbit in my Deadlight 2 player nightmare run. Finally! Nightmare! 0:28, same as for easy.

Also, remember to take a look at the Bunny Comparison page every now and then. We update it every so often... Today, for example! Some new very fast and smooth runs by Midas is what got added today. Enjoy! And make some demos for crying out loud!

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Things have been getting quite quiet round these parts for the last couple of weeks. What with people taking a rest after the efforts of August, a new contest and the younger competitors people returning to school/uni we only have a round half dozen demos from the last week. But of course, where quantity lacks you can be assured that quality will overcome.

Connor Fitzgerald has done the bulk of the demo making work for this update so praize de lord for University "study" weeks. :-).

Another id record falls before the power of the Fitz. Never one to attempt a simple record if there's a difficult one to beat he attacked the Nightmare Run Marathon of The Realm of Black Magic and got the hell out of there in just 5:55, forty-four seconds faster than Jordi's old run.
I was asking some of the big guns (bunnily speaking) in #qdq if they thought that Justin's doom2_01 0:09 Nightmare Run was optimum since I was fed up of it clogging up the oldest demos list if it was. People tried, and people came close (Marvin even got a 9.0) but everyone agreed that it wasn't optimum but would be a right bastard to improve. A couple of days later, Connor sends in the 0:08.
Another old demo bites the dust, Chris's contest winning tower Nightmare 100% fell victim to "I am Connor, ph34r me" and was improved by one second to 0:17.
Connor realised that he didn't have a single custom level Easy 100% record to his name and set out to remedy this shocking and embarrassing condition. He chose Rickard's bub2 demo and improved it by four seconds to 0:29 by letting the slate take the strain.

I'm glad to see that Stefan Schwoon is still enjoying his return to the ranks of the runners. He found the time to improve Tim's Easy 100% Marathon through The Black Episode by nearly a minute (fifty-four seconds to be precise) to 7:18. There's a cool egg demo included which shows the peril of letting a dog get a good run up at you...

The only coop this week has been from Mattias Öman and Joakim Sarkkinen who improved their own cult Nightmare 100% by two seconds to 0:33. Well, they also tried to play fast and loose with the e1m6 long way rules but were slapped back vigourously. Every few months someone tries to send in a coop where one player bunnies to the gold key and exits as soon as the other player extends the bridge. FUCKING NO! :-)

Ah well. That's all from me for today. Keep on sucking and licking, y'all.

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Hello folks. What's up? A lot of fun stuff is happening in castle SDA at the moment. As you know, we're working on quite a few QdQ-projects. If you want to be part of this cirkus, why not try and recam something for qd100ql2? Go to the project page and follow the directions from there. Talking about QdQ, this sunday our channel on QuakeNet, #qdq, had a rare visit from Peter Horvath, who has made a new demo on e3m4 for QdQwavPII. Check it out!

We've got some new AVI:s of Scourge Done Slick available! It's the full recammed monty. Take a look here.

Some good news for you JoeQuakers! Jozsef has recently made a release for both Linux and Windows. Go fetch your eye candy here.

Now to the demos. First up is an id improvement! Having just taken the ep4 eh record last week, Timo Nieminen took a look at Alexander's Azure Agony easy 100% demo and decided that he would beat it by no less than 2 seconds, getting 1:55! Will Alexander take this bait and continue the battle? It won't be easy, but there's always hope ;)

Let's take a look at some normal demos. Or non-id demos anyway. Kay Berntsen moblilzed his speed resources on The Elektra Complex and beat Carl's easy run by one second with this 0:12.

Richard Skidmore needed a rest from the Rogue NH and instead had a go at some old EH.

For the sake of variety he started with r1m5 and got 3:29, 6 seconds faster than Justin, and another one off the oldest demos list.
He continued to vacuum the oldest demos list and found Nolan's six year old demo on Arrival which he beat by one second to 2:08.

Someone (French, Australian or Dominican republican, have a guess!) finally took the marathon through The Deathmatch Arenas below two minutes! So, who did it? Arturo Garcia Lasca! The new time is 1:58, three seconds faster than last time.

Time for some coop demos!

Pif and Luc de Mestre used the Mandel method (formerly the Plachetta protocol (formerly the Hansson manoeuvre (formerly...))) and sent in several improvements to the same record, the easy 100% on The Nameless City. First they got 2:20, then 2:09 and finally 2:06. That last demo is 33 seconds faster than the old demo by Evan and Cameron! Sweet route indeed.
Getting tired of missed zombie gibs on e4m8 Pif and Luc switched to Empire instead. First they beat Daniel's and Jonny's easy 100% by 9 seconds getting 1:49...
...and then they increased the difficulty and filled the table with a nightmare 100%, 2:33 minutes short.
Pif frappe Luc avec une truite and did their very first coop marathon; an easy run through Prodigy Special Edition in 2:49.
Not only Pif and Luc know how to coop. Cult can HARDly be called a HARD map. Mattias Öman and Joakim Sarkkinen put in some HARD work and made this nightmare 100% 0:35, 2 seconds faster than Pif and Luc.
Mattias Öman found and submitted some old demos he made with Christian Tornberg already in august. The map in question is The Undead Task. They did the easy 100% in 0:22...
...and the nightmare 100% in 0:22 too.

That's all!

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Alright, here I go again. Time for another SDA news update with all the latest demo sweetness that has been recorded by you folks over these last few days.

I like traditions, and that's why I'm gonna start this update with some news about maps. Some errors were detected in the re-vised maps pack from last week. Day of the Lords and Cult were not compatible with the demos in the archive, while The Forsaken Citadel, The Catacombs and Shadow Over Innsmouth had been strangely overlooked. That's why we're now offering this pack with those five maps as an update to the big pack. Eventually the big pack will be updated, but this is a treat for those of you who already downloaded the big pack.

So, has anybody been making any demos lately? Oh you better believe it. There are no less than TWO id improvements today. First off is Connor Fitzgerald who reluctantly took on the task of improving the old nightmare run through The Wind Tunnels. Some sweet bunnies and a sweet mcFiendPush gave him this clean 0:58, one second faster than Daniel.

No less superb than that is this next demo, an easy 100% marathon through all of The Elder World. Who has the skills to do that? Timo Nieminen certainly does! His sweet aim and sweet running let him improve his old record by 54 seconds to 13:06. That's 16 seconds faster than ep4 in qd100ql, so I'd say it's about time we released something new =)

Who else has been productive? Carl Tholin. He fired up Quake and made an easy run through The Mortal Environment in 0:28, one second faster than Amrik could manage.

There is no question that Dane Plachetta likes the Hipnotic expansion. As yet another milestone on his way to getting under 1:20 on The Lost Mine he made this 1:20. Mad rocket boosts.

Stefan Schwoon found a little route tweak on pushcoag; skipping the megahealth allowed him to finish the nightmare run in 2:07, 10 seconds faster than last week. Stefan says he has had enough of pushcoag for now. And I can respect that. Who wants to have TO on a map anyway ;-)

The only one fearless enough to play nightmare 100% on rogue maps nowadays is Richard Skidmore.

He started with r1m6. And he started in good style by beating Justin's old record by a whole 39 seconds, making the new record 3:53.
But he didn't stop at that! After some practise he managed to shave yet another 30 seconds off of the time, making the even newer record 3:23, totally 1 minute and 9 seconds faster than Jusin.
To offer you demo viewers some variation Morfans then turned his aim towards r1m5. Using the beloved principle "don't stop and kill anything until you have the proper arsenal to do so" he finished the level in 4:51, 45 seconds faster than Justin.

Coop's Corner also had its fair share of demos this time. 8 to be precise. And they all come from our favourite french coop duo, Pif and Luc de Mestre.

All black within nightmare 100% was first. A shambler made Pif sad, so Luc had to finish the demo by himself. The time they got is is 3:13.
The Hallowed Halls was next up. First an easy run in 1:16.
Short after that, another easy run, but this time in 1:13. Very nice route planning, guys!
With the route already made up they tried for an easy 100% on the same level and made this 1:25.
After that they shifted their focus to The Hidden Castle, and this easy 100% in 0:39 saw the light of day.
Not easily scared by hordes of monsters the brothers went on to record a nightmare 100% in 0:58...
...which they improved to 0:55 one day later.
Last but not least they gave The Dark Zone a whirl and finished the easy 100% in 0:35.

That's it for this time. Writing this took 2 hours and 20 minutes. So it should take about the same to read, right? No? That's an outrage.

All demos download for this update is available from here.

As I type this I can see pretty colours dancing before my eyes. Drugs? Insanity? No, just a nasty head cold. The sheer pressure in my head is making concentration very difficult. Luckily I have the following demos to help me focus what remains of my mind.

We have three id records on display today. Deciding what order to present them in is a tricky task since they're all equally superb. (Actually, one is slightly less superb than the other two but in order to be very, very annoying I'm not going to say which one it, IMHO, is). Just so I can group the next two with the two demos after that we will start with Connor Fitzgerald taking a slow wander around The Dismal Oubliette. Did I say slow wander? I meant lightning quick monster murdering spree as he has improved Stubby's Easy 100% by seven seconds to 3:01.

How does one get over the loss of a much loved id record? Thomas Stubgaard hid his grief by improving his own Nightmare 100% marathon through The Realm Of Black Magic by twenty seconds to 17:16. There's too many great ultra-violent moments in this to pick a favourite out so I'll just content myself with saying that I'm glad he took the rune this time and improved his technically illegal previous marathon. :-)

What is the single highest honour known to man? That's right, being invited to join TeamSDA. And how did Mathias Thore celebrate making his inaugural update? By producing an optimum id record, of course! He completed the nightmare run of Shub's Pit in just 0:17, one second faster than Ilkka and equalling Amrik's Easy Run time. He even recammed the run so now you can view it from a variety of different angles. Way to go, my new brother.

The Bristol chapter of the team, better known to you all as Michael Hudson, joined in with the "welcome aboard" demos with yet another improvement to his marathon Easy Run through DoE1 - Hell's Fortress. No spectacular new routes, just six seconds faster at 8:27.

I certainly wasn't going to be left out of the action. I attacked the p_se_1 Nightmare 100% and managed to complete it in just 2:40, a healthy forty-two seconds faster than the Fleckmeister.

Some people might slight pushcoag's status as a runnable map. Me, for instance. :-) Two people who would disagree, and quite convincingly I might add, are these two.

Pif de Mestre became the first person to complete the Nightmare 100% with a fairly cautious 5:58.
Stefan Schwoon became the second person a couple of days later with a much more gung-ho 4:14.
Since his new Nightmare 100% was now only half a minute or so slower than the Nightmare Run Stefan knew he could make a big dent in that too. He few tries yielded an exit time of 2:17, a massive eighty-two seconds faster than Pif's tablefiller.
Those of you that noticed the title of this update will probably assume that Stefan also took the Easy Run and thus claimed TO of the level. He didn't. The title is misleading. Sorry.

A name we see all to infrequently around here is that of Arturo Garcia Lasca. But the time he's spent away from us playing QW deathmatch has obviously honed his knowledge of The Deathmatch Arenas since he has shaved ten seconds off of Pif's Easy Run Marathon to 2:01. Someone (French, Australian or Dominican republican probably) should take this below two minutes. ;-)

"If you're going to end an update, end it with a set of Kay Berntsen demos." How many times have we heard that said? 30? 40? 100? It just never stops being true.

If reskinned monsters and barrel blasted antics are your bag you've probably already discovered shadow. Kay took a fresh look at this long forgotten level and added the 2004 approach to Ilkka's Easy Run to get 1:04, a gain of seven seconds.
He then added Ilkka's Easy Run approach to Ilkka's Nightmare Run and stole that record too with a 1:22, eight seconds faster.
Then a mixed bag demo on the bunny enabled version of the Easy Run of rdend. Some bits, like the "horvathesque" slope/grenade placement, are simply amazing. Other bits, like the boost to the gold key, are a bit MMEEEEEEAAAAGGGGGHH. The overall effect is a 1:04.
And finally an optimised Nightmare Run of dazsp2c. I suppose it was just a matter of time before someone did this and the man with the skills to go one second faster than Kimmo to 0:09 just happened to be Da Ripah.

Well what do you know? It's taken me so long to write this fairly short update that my cold has practically gone! It's probably never been stated that procrastination is the source of all healing, but in this case it seems to be the truth. :-)

All demos download for this update is available from here.

Alright, people. What is this? An update by whom? An update by the very latest addition to the ranks of TeamSDA, Mr... Mandel! Yeah, that's right. SDA finally took the scary giant leap called expansion, and hired me. Surely it comes as no surprise to those who have visited #qdq this past week, since this job also comes with the privilege of getting to be an OP in the channel. Those of you who still quite can't figure out who's the man behind the nick, I'm Mathias Thore, a Swedish university student who plays way to much quake, at least when put in relation to the number of records I have on SDA =)

I'd like to start off with some good news for you GL-quakers. Thomas Stubgaard has, assisted by myself, put in a huge effort and re-vised all maps in the archive to make them have transparent water. And what's better, Thomas even made a huge dz with all these maps in it. Definitely a recommended download. If 190 MB isn't too hefty for you, get it here.

Let's get started with the demos already then. First up is an improvement to Amrik's easy run on dazsp2 by none other than Kay Berntsen, who manages to jump through the level in 0:25, one second faster than Amrik.

Next demo is an improvement to Timo's winning nightmare run in the latest SDA contest, The Temple of Gaia. Daniel Hansson worked the rocket launcher with enough precision to finish in 0:20, a one second improvement to the old record.

Let's move on to some 100% records.

Richard Skidmore couldn't stand the awkward table situation for czg100b, where the easy 100% was a whole 8 seconds slower than the nightmare 100%. Determined to turn the situation around he finished the level in 1:33, 6 seconds faster than the old record. Good initiative, but still 2 seconds to go to the nightmare 100%...
Thomas Bergendorff isn't done with carnage yet. A three second improvement over Justin's old nightmare 100% record is what he managed this time around on this quad packed map. The new time? 1:48 of course.
More demos from The Temple of Gaia. Mattias Öman made a nightmare 100% in 0:36, 4 seconds better than his old record. But what can you do when Daniel Hansson decides to take another record? By shaving 5 seconds off of Mattias's run he takes the record down to 0:31.

Alright, so what's new in the marathon section?

There really doesn't seem to be an end to how many records you can take if you happen to be Pif de Mestre. First he made an easy run through the Deathmatch Arenas in 2:15. Not entirely satisfied with that he had another go, and managed to take the time down by another four seconds to 2:11.
Morfans had a busy weekend. The Prodigy Special Edition needed an easy 100% table filler and Morfans thought that he could be just the right man to make it. And indeed he was. On the first attempt he got 20:14, which he improved to 16:27 only a little later. And he was even nice enough to give some tips in the text file to whoever wants to try and beat the time!

Something is odd with the coop records section this time. There's only one demo, and it isn't even by Pif and Luc! What we have is actually another demo which was meant to increase the August totals. But since Daniel Hansson and Jonny Andersson recorded this dmc1m2 easy 100% already in July it doesn't really help. None the less it beats their current record by one second and takes the time down to 0:25.

Oh man. I didn't mean to write such a long update. But believe me when I say that it's a difficult situation... Writing my first ever update, trying to make a good first impression, not really speaking English, and having "The king of comedy"(tm) on the team on top of that. What can you do except your best, close your eyes and hope it's up to standards?

And that's all I have to say. Really. I wonder if I forgot something...

All demos download for this update is available from here.

What can I say? What else is there to say? Why waste time on a lot of flowery prose when three simple words sum it all up...

YOU
DID
IT!

We didn't seriously think that nineteen demos in one day would be possible. You guys actually turned in THIRTY! Damn it, you did us proud. That means, as I'm sure you know, that August 2004 was the busiest month in The Archive's long and illustrious history. 205 demos in a single month, beating June 1998's long standing record of 194.

What's that? You want me to shut up and get on with the demos? Okay...

Leading the call for people to come out of retirement and join the push was SDA and QdQ legend Stefan Schwoon. Our ol' German buddy scraped the rust from his skills and blasted his way through pushcoag, completing the Easy 100% in 1:54, three seconds faster than Pif. He even came along to hang out in #qdq afterwards, bless him.

Kay "haunting footsteps" Berntsen made his contribution by grabbing a record from the Oldest Demos page and improving it. He chose Optic's 1998 hip2m6 Nightmare Run, and just about managed a two second improvement to 1:15. He also managed to freak us out with this, and his previous, SoA demo as he has some clumpy footsteps sounding whenever the player walks. None of us had ever heard these before but one quick search through the .qc by Nolan and it turns out that if you have crosshair 2 set you get footsteps. Did you know that?

From the decription I gave of cult in the last update you might think I didn't like the map very much. And you'd be right. That didn't stop Kay from taking one second off of Jonny's time for the Easy Run to 0:20.

Next we have the first of several demos today that people didn't think were quite up to the expected quality but were sent in anyway to help the August total. Connor Fitzgerald improved my Nightmare Run of ballshft by an enormous five seconds, or 20%, to 0:20. Excellent demo, and he wasn't even going to send it in. Who'd have thought, eh? An Australian with standards...

Cheap improvements and tablefilling abound on that old Fortress classic, 2run5.

I don't think that Mathias Thore was totally satisfied with his performance in this 0:59 Easy 100%, one second faster than his previous record. "Don't watch this piece of shit" were his exact words. It's not that bad though...
Pif, Luc and Andre de Mestre realised that if one player (Pif) can get to the enemy flag then another one (Luc) can immediately press the cap button and the third (Andre) can exit. This gave a Nightmare Run of 0:33 which must have been pretty dull for Luc and Andre to make. :-)
At least they had a few things to shoot at to pass the time while they made the Easy 100% in 0:33.

We're also stuck in the middle of a little marathon mania at the moment. These "iron man" demos are usually only undertaken by the most mentally scarred of speedrunners. These are no exception.

Tim Doherty wanted us to set up a new marathon for him. One that starts with 2run5 and goes through to zippie_sda via every other custom map on the tables. We told him "no". He did, however improve his Easy Run of doe2 twice, first by thirty-six seconds to 15:27 and then by a further eighteen seconds to 15:09. As soon as he sent it in I pointed out a little route change to him that would save ten seconds or so so maybe we'll be seeing a run under 15:00 soon.
Pif de Mestre improved his recent pse Easy Run by fifteen seconds. He lost ten seconds to the "shambler that never telefrags when it's supposed to" on p_se_3b which shows just how much quicker the rest of the runs are in this 4:42.
George Dickeson snatched a record away from Pif, the Easy Run of dmsp. One second was all he managed. Just one tiny second. 2:18.
Sidd also filled the empty Nightmare 100% slot of dmsp with a demo that even puts the expression "table filler" to shame. To be fair he did just want to get it done in August to help us with the record and so the fact that it takes him, for example, over 7 minutes to do dm3sp can be seen as quite amusing rather than deeply, deeply sad. Suffice to say that this 19:22 is not optimised yet...

Quite by chance both myself and the de Mestres made some demos on czg100b.

I lost my Nightmare 100% record to Flecker over 3 years ago and it's annoyed me ever since. I finally reclaimed it by *ahem* one second to 1:31.
Pif and Luc made full use of the grenade and rocket launcher that this level kindly gives them and fell down the exit hole on the Easy run in 0:32 and then 0:31.
They did exactly the same with the Nightmare Run and got a shiney 0:31.
Next they moved on to the Nightmare 100% and made a tablefilling 1:19 which they soon kicked into shape with a much sweeter 1:13. This demo also has a funny egg demo included. Now, we've all seen the teleporting ogre bug many times, but have you ever seen a double teleporting ogre???

Mattias Öman and Christian Tornberg heard us call and answered with a few new demos on their usual maps.

The suddenly realised that they hadn't done the 2-player Nightmare Run of bfinal and so took the rockets to the vores one more time and scored a 0:28.
Then it was time for Mikael Carllsson to join them once again for a trip down the coopmine.
- They're all obviously a lot more experienced than the last time they tried the Easy 100% because they hammered eight seconds off their previous record to 1:36.
- But only two seconds off their Nightmare 100% taking the time to 1:39.

Finally, we'll take a look at a bunch of coops by the two guys that went absolutely demo crazy in August and helped make it the record month it was, Pif and Luc.

They got fed up with Mattias and Christian poaching all their records and fought back by recapturing their hunter Easy Run by one second to 0:46.
The elin Nightmare Run was good for a couple of quick demos as they destroyed the level first in 0:16 and then in 0:15.
mexx9c Easy Run 1:16, one second faster than Stefan and Matthias.
Moving on one level that gave Bishop a good kicking on mexx9d, completing the Easy Run in 3:10 and then 2:59. The Bishop kill could still be a lot smoother here. Hell, they ignored a box of cells and 50 SNG nails and used shotguns instead. :-P
Then back to flyer to finish things off.
- They wasted little time galloping through the Easy 100% in just 0:22.
- Andre returned at this point and helped them achieve a 0:10 for the Easy Run...
- ...and a 0:10 for the Nightmare Run.

Well, that draws the record breaking month to a close. And since Evan is still mysteriously absent and incommunicado I had to update every single one myself. (Well, Stubby and mwh did all the tables and stuff. That's my point, really, there was two of them...) This has left me a little weary and in need of some rest. Luckily help is at hand in the form of the very latest addition to the ranks of TeamSDA, Mr..... you'll see next time. :-)